Most every business entity advertises to promote products or services, and often pays significant sums of money on such activities to broadcasters and service providers. Given that most acknowledge that broadcast media provides wide exposure, advertisements generate large amounts of revenue for broadcasters and service providers. Therefore, in an effort to increase revenue, broadcasters and service providers may take any steps necessary to encourage advertising.
On the other hand, consumers are generally less entertained by advertising. To most, an advertisement is an unwanted pause in a program with generally increased volume, and therefore, a significant inconvenience. As such, the volume on a television set may be muted during a commercial within broadcast. Alternatively, a user may change the channel or turn the television set off during a commercial. Although this may effectively suppress an advertisement if successfully executed, such methods are laborious and prone to error given that a user must guess as to when the commercial break will end.
In addition to broadcast content, recorded content may also contain advertisements if it was recorded from a broadcast. As such, time-shifted content on VHS or personal video recorders may contain the same annoyances as broadcast content. Although users may employ the techniques discussed above to suppress commercials in recorded content, the previously-mentioned drawbacks persist. Moreover, despite the ability to fast-forward through commercials, users must still deal with undershoot and overshoot problems. For example, if a user fast-forwards past an advertisement adjoining a program, he or she must then rewind to the correct location, thereby risking the same over/undershoot problems. Similarly, if the user stops the fast-forwarding prematurely, then he or she must either watch the remaining commercial or fast-forward again risking under/overshoot. Thus, despite the advantages of time shifting over viewing in real-time, commercial suppression in recorded content is still a manual and laborious task that is prone to error, thereby exacerbating the annoyance and inconvenience brought by commercials in the first place.